Photography as Democracy

©2008 Richard X. Moore. All rights reserved.

Photography is a door that’s open to anyone and everyone.This statement explains its strength and its weakness in the same breath.

Despite the democratic nature of the medium, we tend to find ways of Balkanizing it. There are fine art photographers, documentarians, snapshooters, commercial photographers who do weddings and babies, and we organize these groups on a relevance continuum according to what we value and respect. Digital photography lowers the bar even further by eliminating what used to be the relatively high cost of creation. These days, anyone with a hundred-dollar bill and a computer is able to buy a camera and  shoot as many images as their hard drive will hold, which is a lot. Everyone is bound to get a good one now and again.

Theoreticians and art historians and philosophers can argue about these things because that’s how they make their livings. They can put individual photographers into whatever camp they choose. I choose to embrace the universality of image-making and take the images as they come. I don’t think we really need, or benefit from, a Taste Arbitration Panel looking over the shoulder of image creators. We have our own eyes and our own visual literacy. These words are about my own image-making, my own tastes, my own preferences, my own successes and failures. As the title I’ve chosen for this blog would indicate, my visual appetite is  eclectic and pretty hungry.

My photography is art, it’s propaganda, it’s education, it’s visual stimulation, it’s argument, it’s capitulation. Some of it is outstanding, some of it really sucks. Much of it occupies the space between. I’m not really concerned about it. My images, all images, stand on their own and speak their own language. Once I release them into the world, they’re on their own. You get to decide if you understand their language, or not.

Welcome friends, enemies, and ambivalents. This is a peek inside the mind of one photographer. It might be a awful mess in there, but there’s some order amidst the chaos. Here’s hoping you might find it.

RXM